Bulgarian documentary The Deception Queen currently in production
- Luchezar Avramov and Dimitar Stoianovich’s project traces the get-rich-quick scam OneCoin, promoted as a cryptocurrency by a Bulgarian-based offshore company
The Bulgarian duo of directors-screenwriters Luchezar Avramov and Dimitar Stoianovich (A Picture with Yuki [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lachezar Avramov
film profile]) have started shooting their next film, The Deception Queen, which aims to blow the lid off the story behind the OneCoin Ponzi scheme, initiated by Bulgarian-born lawyer and fraudster Ruja Ignatova, who disappeared in 2017 just as a secret US warrant was filed for her arrest. The team, who are also relying on the expertise of investigative journalist Nikolay Stoyanov and business development specialist Martin Kadilov, are backed by producer Nikolay Mutafchiev, representing PREMIERstudio, and are being supported by the Bulgarian National Film Center with an estimated budget of €275,500.
The highly educated entrepreneur Ignatova, who promised to make the world rich through a revolutionary cryptocurrency, was living a glamorous life that attracted vast audiences to her OneCoin lectures. She managed to persuade everyone to invest in her project and promised to double everyone's coins, but instead of fulfilling those dreams, she disappeared, leaving behind a story of greed, deceit, fraud, around 3.6 million victims all over the world and a $5 billion global scam, fuelled by a multi-level marketing scheme. Since then, OneCoin has been the subject of a number of investigations during the past few years, as there is almost no country or jurisdiction unaffected by this massive crypto scam. The Deception Queen is being prepared as the first actual documentary on the case, by following the story from the beginning and digging into the facts from the very source, such as the central office of the OneCoin company in Bulgaria.
Avramov and Stoianovic’s motivation to create this movie is related to their personal interest in “human attempts to navigate through the rapidly changing world, in a society where greed lurks just around the corner and false prophets are all around us promising easy money without any effort”. They compare the scam to the most legendary frauds in financial-crime history, masterminded by Bernie Madoff and Carlo Ponzi, and also add that it is a story “about our world of contradictions, where the authorities are in crisis and their voices are lost in the noise of the information around us. The world where false prophets and their promises to change the system and restore justice for ‘the little man’ are blooming.”
The Deception Queen will include unique footage from the rise of Ignatova and OneCoin, many unpublished audio recordings, and interviews with the first CEO of OneCoin, the lead prosecutor in the investigation on the Bulgarian side, the person who currently manages the company's assets, as well as victims of the scheme in Britain and the USA. The project entered production in late 2021, and the team plans to wrap filming by May 2022 and to celebrate its premiere in November 2022.
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